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'm^ •^ 4 t * â- r m • » V I ♦ r * ...» * » « -« * « i ' 4- ♦ â- * ♦ ♦ » t f t Ice That Drives Strong Men Mad The roof of the world is perm- anently clad in ice. The Ice Cap of Greenland. i;i places 9,0OO feet thick, covers a bigger area than Western F.arope and is continnally spewing g'aciers into the frozen sea â€" ice- bergfS by the thousand. Spitzbergen and the waters of Arctic Siberia add to this profusion of ice, much of which drifts into the North At- l.tntic. Mid-October sees an icy pulp forming on the fjords of Northern .S-beria. Then, suddenly, the mere- iTj' drops to 70 below and-^bang! â€"an icy covering is whisked across the ocean.- It thickens every sec- ond until, in half an hour, it is a foot deep. Where currents are sirong, the movement of the water defeats the cold. But not for long, 'ihe channels of open water formed ly the currents gradually narrow ?nd disappear. Roar Like 1,000 Guns Inside 12 hours, the ice is four feet thick. .\nd when the tide be- gins to ri.se, a roar like a thousand guns booms across the Arctic. Such, at least, is the case in the New Si- berian â- I'slands, off Northern Siberia, Here the tide rises and falls as much as 40 feet, and when it rises after the "freeze-up" the world Lcems to go mad. The sea presses beneath the ice which resists at first â€" then suddenly j.4ves way. With- a tremendous thunderclap, the air compressed be- tween the sea and its 'cy crust bursts out. flinging into the air blocks of ice the ize of a house. Jets of sea water follow the escap- ing air, pouring across the surface of the ice. adding feet to its thick- ness. Once again, the tide falls and rises. As it drops, the ice is left kiispended across the fjords until, una'ble to support itself, i* crashes into the sea which, exposed to the Bir, freezes again â€" the old ice and tl^e new forming a contorted mass perhaps 20 feet thick. Then the tide begins to rise again, pressing upwards harder and harder until cnce again i: bursts through, fling- Jng immense blocks of -ce on to the shore with the uproar of a vol- canic eruption. "I've seen mew go mad at such times," says Jan Wetzel, a trader '.yho lives in the New Sigerians. "Seen them run along the shore ' wa^'ing their arms and yelling with fear until thev fall from exhaust- ion." For seven months the sun is but a, memory. But with the return of spring, its warmth melts the ice sufficiently for tide, current and wind to break it up. Late last century, e.xpK.rers de- cided that the currents that carry â- ttie fioes of Siberia, Spitzbergen and Greenland into the North At- lantic could be used to carry a ship very close to the Pole. The Amer- ican explorer. Commander G. de Long, was the first to test this theory. For two years, his ship, the Jeanette, drifted towards tiie North Pole, at times with pack-ice piled against Iter to the level of the decks. But the pack crushed her, leaving her crew to die on the frozen sea ISO miles from the New Siberian Islands. But the icy fate of the Jeauuette did not dissuade others from fol- â-  lowing in her track. In 1894 the Norwegian, Nausen, allowed his ship, the Frani. to be frozen-in not far from where the Jeaniiette had perished. Day after day, the Frani drifted towards the North Pole. When she had reached the most northerly limit of the current, Nansen low- eved sledges and dogs on to the floes and set out with a companion, Johansseii. He was a brave man. He knew lie could not hope to find his ship again, for she was driftiiy; iij an unknown direction. He knew he would have to make hi« way to land as best he could. Ships Lifted Forty Feet When tinally forced to turn back, he headed for Franz Josef The Manassa Mauler Shows 'Em How â€" ^Jack Dempsey, former world's heavyweight boxing champion, is keenly interested in all welfare work. During his recent visit to Toronto he called at Variety Village, vocational training .sclidol for crippled children. The School is operated by the Toronto- Variety Club ; the work is one of the activities of the Ontario Society for Crippled Children which is conducting it annual Easter Seals campaign for funds March 13- April 9. The boys with Dempsey are, from left : Wilfred Dombroskie, Renfrew ; Bob Ken- nedy, Tor6nto ; Donald Brennan, Ottawa and Donald Orr, Sault Ste. Marie. Donations may be sent to Timniv, Toronto. Island, a sledge-journey which only one of Ills huskies survived. There, he and his companion also would have died if they had not met mem- bers of a British expedition. Back in Norway again, Nansen learned that the Fram had survived. She was lucky, for the power of the fioes is such that they have lifted a ship 40 feet out of the v.ater. Such was the experience of the Intrepid, one of the ships that searched for Sir John Franklin's Erebus and Terror. The ice, con- verging on her hull, piled beneath her until she was 39 feet "above sea level." Huge loose blocks top- pled to her decks. Her crew thought the end had come â€" when the pressure suddenly relaxed and the ice fell away, all but two pil- lars, one under her bow, the other under the stern. Then her skipper. Cap!. Cator, did something that no seaman had cone before â€" or will do again. ' Swinging over his ship's side, he ivalked the length of the ship under the keel. Ten minutes later, he clambered aboard again to report that she had suffered little damage, just before the two ice pillars col- lapsed and the ship fell into her natural element! Every Man Perished The Erebus and the Terror (in \vhich Franklin tried to find the North-West Passage) had sides 17 inches thick. Even so, when ice trapped them in a fjord in the ex- treme north of Canada, it crushed thetti. Every man on board â€" tliere were 103 â€" perished, but tlie two ships were yet to make another journey. When ultimately the ice broke up, it carried them nearly 3,000 miles along tlie north coast of Canada, down into the North At- lantic. There they were seen by the company, of the Renovation, heeled over on the pack ice, their bides gaping. Similar tales have come out of the Arctic during recent years. The Russians lost six ships in six months before the last war. A Norwegian sealer, caught in the spitzbergen floes, was carried right round the island before, after 10 months in the grip of the pack, she foundered with all hands. Last spring, six sealers were crushed while sealing off Labrador. New- foundland and Greenland. During one period of 30 years, /O ships â€" Russian, Norwegian, Ca- nadian. American â€" were destroyed in the grind of pack-ice ot in col- lision with 'bergs. *â-  » r t « « * * f C Friendship Wins --.Minnie tlie mother cat who lives at the railroad yards, evidently triumphed over her baser instincts in adopting- Ihis fearless mouse into tier household. Shortly after Minnie .^ave birth to a litter of kittens, the wee mouse turned lip and madi? il.«el{ at home. Wayward "Oscar" â€" Aircraft worker, Bruce Kierraan, 20, is the holder of an "Oscar," liut he didn't win it for acting. Kierjffan found the coveted statuette about nine years ago. Despite demands of the Aca- demy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to surrender the statuette, Kierman held onto it, and every year around Aca- demy Award time he wonders who lost or threw away his "Oscar." Life Amongst A Million Seals Charles Mulve.v, a Canadian e.x- barrister who has travelled widely in North West Canada recently gave a BBC talk on his experiences on the Pribolofs, a group of islands in the far North Pacific. These islands are the only mating grounds of the great fur bearing seal herd. They are almost fogbound in sum- mer and one morning as Mulvey groped along the bare, boulder strewn shore he heard a deep- tiiroated roar and through the fog saw a giant seal, six feet long and weighing about seven hundred pounds, lumbering by. From a safe distance he watched the great creat- ure swing his head to and fro, giowling and snarling vindictively and threatening any nearby seals. In the second week of May hund- reds of bull seals come to the is- lands and each adopts a territory which becomes his harem during the mating season. The best posi- tions, nearest to the wiler, are the property of the fiercest fighters and when the fog lifted, Mulvey watclied many of t)iese .-inesoine territorial battles. .\ seal would take up a position, anothe' would fancy it and charge with .» roaring challenge, to be met by the first seal with teeth bared and powerful neck thrust out. Mulvey described these lights as the most vicious he had ever seen and at times he turned away in horror praying that something might inten'ene to stop them. But the end comes oply with iOTEBL 40 Mr ItLOANiN ANP PON riHiNA Vft«.MCNtrnii - -ft THANKMIVIN9 Mv ^M^kM complete victory for the stronger' seal. During the battle period the fe- males have been coming from the South Pacific, where they bask happily during the winter. In May they feel an irrestible urge to go back to mate on the islands where they were born. The sea is dotted for miles with their heads as these lovely little seals, only two and a half to three feet long and v/eighing about eighty pounds, come gently tc what Mulvey described as "two months of the most hellish form cf domesticity that the female of any species has ever experienced." As the females swim in the bulls are ranged along the shore to meet them, cooing to attract them. A fe- male approaches the bull of her choice and is picked up as though she were a kitten and carried to the harem. She is left there while her husband goes to collect other v.ives, for although the young bull seal takes only one or two, the mature bull may take a hundred. Bull seals attain maturity at seven but mate from tlie age of four, Avhen they develop a mane of light yellowish hair. For the two and a half months of mating season they never eat and seldom sleep. They spend their entire time in their harems and when they leave the islands are emaciated wrecks, com- pared witli the lusty giants they were in mid-May. Young bachelor seals live away from tlie harems and cautiously make their way to the sea tlirough special lanes be- tween them, for trespassers are torn to pieces. Mulvey spent a great deal of time in these neutr:tl lanes, studying the seals and watching tlie mothers caring for their babies, for within a very short time of landing the females give birth to the young conceived in the pre- vious year. He watched the young bachelors playing together in the sea with an amiability that leaves them when they become mature and grow into "thugs, wife-beaters and all round domestic tyrants." These seals' pelts are unlike any others and are thick, soft and lus- trous with great commercial value. In the middle of the last century, when the herd numbered between three and five million, the seals were slaughtered with hidous fero- city and in fifty years their numbers were reduced to about two hundred and fifty thousand. Now the islands are controlled by the United States, coastguard cutters escort the herd on migration and when it is in residence patrol the surrounding waters. No one is allowed to land on the islands without permission from \A'ashington and no ships are permitted to call. Only a certain number of seals are killed eacli year and these are all three year old bachelors, for old bulls' skins Dre scarred by fighting and females are kept for breeding. Industry .\ woman visiting Norway was amazed at the enormous rocks in the valley where she was staying. "Wherever do they all come from?" she asked a local inhabi- tant. "The glacier brought theni down," he explained. "But whcre'g the glacier?" "Gone back for more rocks." was the reply. T*bl« MaiuMrs la Hm Mid^lU Aff«s i Forks were unknown until the time of Elizabeth and even then w«r< regarded as foreign and ef- fvninate. . â-  . The problem of wash- ing up was largely solved by having no plates. Instead, a thick slice (• tranche) of bread was laid before each guest. On this the meat was placed and the gravy soaked down into th<i l)read. The charitable, and the well-fed took care to leave at least a little of this bread at the end of the meal. It was then scram- bled for by the scullions and what they did not eat was given to the poor at the gate. . . . The medieval cook had quite an array of tools. As early as the sec- ond half of the twelfth centur>' we find Ale.xander Neckham, enumer- ating, in addition to pots with their trivets or tripods and their pot- sticks and pot-hooks, a mortar and pestle, a frying pan, a grid-iron, a posnet or saucepan, a saucer (that is a vessel for mixing sauce), a hand- mill, a pepper-mill, and an instru- ment for producing breadcrumbs. He also mentions a special table for chopping and mixing herbs and vegetables. It is plain that even at this remote period the culinary art was capable of many elabora- tions. . . . These pomps were naturally con- fined to the houses of the aristoc- racy, but the burghers who grew wealthy towards the end of the medieval period, if they lacked something of knightly ceremony, certainly knew how to furnish their tables. In the Cent nouvelles Nou- velles (which may lie taken to re- flect manners common to both England and France) we read of the widow of a merchant setting before a .â- iingle guest a dinner con- sisting of soup, bacon, tripe, and a roasted ox-tongue, followed by a piece cf salt beef and some choice mutton, .^s her guest devoured all these she called for a ham, and wheu this had vanished, for cheese and a disli of tarts and apples. To our modern "rationed" appetites this would seem to constitute a very handsome repast. It was customary to wash before beginning a meal, and favoured guests had a ewer of water, a bowl, and a towel brought to them by t\vo servants. Less important people were expected to wash before sitting down and for this purpose lavours or lavatories were provided some- times in the hall itself, sometimes outside. A few of these lavatories have, survived in the cloisters of cathedrals. When the guests were seated the servants spread cloths over the tables, placed on them the salt-cellars and, in later times, the knives. Spoons were also provided when the nature of the food seemed to render them necessary. One very curious feature of me- dieval table-manners is mentioned so often in the metrical romances that there can be little doubt of its being a universal custom. Guests were seated at the tables in pairs with only one plate between them out of whicii they were both expected to cat. . . . The placing of guests must also have offered considerable opportunity for the exercise of tact by the lady of the house. â€" From "The Character of England," edited by Ernest Barker. All From S*awe«d From the days when it was dis- covered that iodine could be ex- tracted from burnt seaweed, scien- tists have been putting this humble plant under a thousand and one t«?ts to. find out what other uses k has for mankind. Latest discovery is of tremen- dous benefit â€" that a soluble wool can be made from seaweed for use in dentistry. Haemorrhage after an extraction was one of those things you hoped you never had; but this new soluble wool has vir- tually overcome the possibility of this. The inventive genius behind this discovery is Frank Bonnisken, who is still trying to find other applica- tions for seaweed. "I want to con- centrate on bloodless surgery," he says. He has been at the seaweed game for twentj' years, and in that time he has converted seaweed into hair- cream as well as into ice-cream powder. Aritifical woo! lias also been made from the plant; silk has been copied, and to-day you may have your food wrappe<' in a certain type of transparent wrapping paper that originally was a green, blistery plant at the bottom of the ?ca. Couldn't Be Heaven T!ie sick man had been delirious with fever for days, but now he regainsd consciousness and became aware of his comfortable bed and the gentle assurance of coof. loving hands. "Where am I?" lie asked weakly. "In Heaven " "No, dear," said his wife s'joth- ingly, "I'm still with you" Belgium's Ruler? â€" Prince Baudouin, 19. above, son of King Leopold III, would be- come king of Belgum if the suggestion of former Premier Paul-Henri Spaak, leader of the powerful Socialist Party, is followed. Spaak urged the king in an open letter to turn over the throne to the prince to restore order and unity. Acting Premier Gaston Eyskens, Soci- al Christians" leader, reportedly favors the plan. Royal Snack Bar â€" To aid her family's fading fortunes. Lady Lees (pouring), wife of Sir John Lees, third baronet, of Poole, England, has opened this snack bar outside the lodge gates at her South Lytchett Manor home. The customer is I.ady- Lees' daughter-in-law, Mrs. Faith Lee. Financial stress also forced the family to move iftto a cottage on the groti!ids and rent the manor house as a school. By Arthur Pointer